Ducking the Whip. Dodging Party Discipline in Social Media?

Parties want to present an image of coherent blocs without dissent, but intra-party conflict is not only common but of great interest for the public as well as researchers. Open conflict can predict government formation, changes in policy or personnel. The ability to present a unified front is threatened by the increasing use of social media in politics. As importance of twitter rises for political processes around the world, the attention paid to these short statements by the public, the media and politicians themselves gives it a special aura: it is supposed to be direct, unfiltered and honest. It is the opposite of party discipline. The question is whether MPs actually use it to "duck the whip" of their party. Politicians can use social media to present an independent message, to support their party or directly oppose it. This makes social media a much finer seismograph of inner-party tectonics than media reports or official statements. This paper uses text classification and social network analysis to differentiate between "party-centred", independent and openly opposing behavior. Is there a wider intra-party heterogeneity visible than in roll calls, parliamentary speeches or press statements? Using a data set of all twitter statements ever made by German Members of Parliament, we present evidence to which extent and in which context deviation from the "party-line" takes place. In the next stage of analysis, we will explain this behavior by the presence of sanctioning mechanisms, factions and individual traits.